How businesses are responding to Covid restrictions

During these difficult and unsettling times, it is a particularly strange time to be a business owner and leader. Business owners are very much finding themselves having to roll with the punches, and with everything changing all the time it is no surprise that so many people are struggling to know what to do next. However, there are some key ways in which many businesses have been responding to covid restrictions, and are continuing to, and they offer some key insights into what could be the wise move to make for other businesses too. Let’s take a look at some of the most common responses businesses have had.

Homeworking

One of the first steps that businesses made, and which is continuing to be policy in many areas, is to start allowing people to work from home wherever possible. This has been an important move towards a safer working world during the pandemic, and it is something that is certainly helping to flatten the curve somewhat. But as it turns out, it can sometimes be a challenge for businesses to work out how to actually do this right. There has been something of a learning curve for many when it comes to homeworking.

One of the main challenges here is the question of how to ensure that a business is getting as much as possible out of their employees. As it happens, there are actually plenty of ways that a business can do this, through the use of monitoring and remote control of work computers which have been taken home, and using video conferencing and voice calls to keep in touch. Of course, a simple email can go a long way too.

Another issue for many has been the question of who to send home and who to keep in the office, with a lot of places offering a staggered approach where staff members swap places every few weeks. This appears to work, but it might also cause other issues with all the moving around. All in all, however, this is proving to be one of the better insights to come from the pandmeic, and it’s something that a lot of companies are going to hang on to long after the pandemic is over.

Virtual help

There are two sides to this issue of virtual help. One is the way in which businesses are trying to provide help to their customers, and increasingly doing it through virtual means where seeing them in person is not possible. That’s obviously an important way to maintain good customer relations while keeping everyone as safe as possible. But there other side of it is how businesses are using virtual help for themselves, to help keep everything running in place in the right way.

The prime example of the kind of virtual help that businesses are using is a virtual receptionist, as can be found at sites like www.rubyreceptionist.com.au. With these tools, customers’ calls can be answered as quickly as possible in the normal way, while ensuring that nobody is having to go to the office. This can be especially useful for businesses which do not have enough staff, or who have had to let go of some of their receptionist staff during cutbacks. All kinds of virtual help are only going to continue increasing as time goes on and the pandemic rages on more and more.

Switching positions

In the attempt to keep the brand alive, many businesses are starting to understand the importance of moving around and switching positions from time to time. Sometimes this is absolutely essential, and the covid pandemic is a prime example of when that might be the case. In order to keep a business thriving and surviving, there will often need to be a revisiting or a reappraisal of exactly what the brand is and what it is offering. In doing that, the business is much more likely to survive.

The key in getting this right is to pay attention to the needs of the moment, and to have a thumb on the pulse of the culture. If a business can do that, they can ensure that their maneuver is going to be a successful one, and that the company will therefore survive long after the pandemic is over – at which point, a reverse move might again be possible or even necessary. Businesses are often defined by how they can respond to the moment, and right now is a prime example of that in action.

Social distancing

For those who are still having to work in a shared workplace, there is obviously a huge change in the way that this happens. Much of this will come down to the specific restrictions and measures which are in place through the law, which can be an extremely local thing, with some parts of the country going into lockdown on their own and so on. But there are also measures that companies are deciding on themselves, regardless of the laws that they also have to abide with.

In most workplaces, social distancing will be in place, which means having staggered work desks and ensuring that there is a one-way system in place, and all those other measures which we are now all so used to. Some workplaces are going even further, with the use of face visors being mandatory in some, and a range of other similar measures. How a business responds specifically in this way seems very much indicative of what kind of approach they are taking on the whole from a top-down perspective. Something that most businesses are keen on doing is ensuring that they are not helping to spread the virus any more than it already has.

All of these changes are likely to keep on happening, with further changes up ahead, and businesses are going to respond in a variety of ways still. Anyone who runs a business should now be thinking ahead to the likely results of a second wave of the virus on their business.

28/09/2020